Passion, Flow & Burnout

Depuis quelques années, alors que la frontière entre travail et vie personnelle s’estompe, que le travail devient plus exigeant et que les traditions communautaires se dégradent, de plus en plus de gens ne parviennent pas à cultiver la vie de loisir de haute qualité qu’Aristote considère comme essentielle au bonheur humain. Cela laisse un vide qui

heroic individualism and its most prevalent symptoms—restlessness, feeling rushed, low-level angst, scatteredness, exhaustion, burnout, periods of emptiness, a compulsion to keep chasing the next thing, and recurrent longing—all of which are supported by mounting data that we’ll soon examine, describe what so many people report feeling these days.

Most workers who are fortunate enough to exert some control over their efforts—such as knowledge workers, small-business entrepreneurs, or freelancers—tend to avoid taking on so much work that they crash and burn, but also tend to avoid working a reasonable amount. They exist at that point of maximum sustainable overhead tax that seems to represent